


Humming a Different Tune

by Carmarthen



Series: Let's Face the Music and Dance [2]
Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo e Giulietta - Ama e Cambia il Mondo, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Changing Tenses, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, Multi, Pre-OT3, Prohibition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 12:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3487814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Giulia Cappallett is fourteen, her beloved cousin Rosalina leaves. Joined a convent, her father tells guests, but Giulia knows that's not true. She bobs her hair and shortens her skirts and keeps her ears open, determined not to be kept in the dark anymore, but she never forgets what Rosalina told her about love.</p><p>A Julie-centered prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3149423">Soon, We'll Be Without the Moon</a>, converging to the same point. It's probably best to read that one first. (Like that story, this contains some implied homophobia, and very very faint hints of a pre-OT3. Julie and Tebaldo are of course cousins.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humming a Different Tune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artdalek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artdalek/gifts).



> A very, very exceedingly late birthday present—I hope you like it!
> 
> Thanks to Miss M. for the beta. :-)
> 
> 1920s largely hand-waved, so if I got anything egregiously wrong, please let me know. I am one of those people who changes names to fit the setting, although I try to make them obvious. If you want a key, there's one at the end.

When Rosalina slicked her hair back in an Eton bob and started wearing men's suits, square-shouldered and sharply pressed, Giulia didn't think much of it. She was still cousin Rosalina, never too busy for her younger cousins, always ready to tease Tebaldo out of a black mood or listen to Giulia's stories.

It was Rosalina who had taught Giulia to wear lipstick, Rosalina who had showed her how to sneak into Papa's place of business when the jazz was hot and the dance floor hopping so no one would see another girl hiding in the shadows, watching wide-eyed. It was Rosalina who'd punched Greg Sansone for cornering Giulia in the kitchen and kissing her, knocked him clear to the floor as neatly as any man could have. (Greg was just lucky Tebaldo hadn't caught him, Rosalina said coolly, or it would have been a blade and not her fist. He left Giulia alone, after that.)

If Rosalina did not come for dinner as often, Giulia only thought it was because she was busy with her new job—or her new friends, tall women in short skirts or tailored suits, women who rolled their own cigarettes and talked about things Giulia only vaguely understood. Her little monstrous regiment, Rosalina fondly called them, while Tebaldo rolled his eyes and hurried Giulia away, as if somehow they were dangerous. But that was Tebaldo; always suspicious, always worried for her without reason.

Then Rosalina got arrested. Well, arrests happened all the time, whenever Scaliger felt he wasn't in nice enough with the Feds, or during an election year, when the mayor needed his police force to look good. Everyone knew Scaliger was happy to drink Mrs. Montague's moonshine or Tony Cappellett's smuggled Canadian whiskey, and take their money, too. The point was, there was no reason for Papa to look so grim when he bailed her out, no reason for Rosalina to come out of the library pale and tight-lipped with anger, her mascara smeared like she'd been crying.

“I’m going away,” she told Giulia, her embrace uncomfortably tight. There was a bruise under her eye, poorly concealed by her makeup. 

“Where?” Giulia asked, her eyes hot and prickly with tears. She felt like a child in a world where no one would tell her what was happening, and not like a young woman about to make her debut into society. “Why?”

The door of the library opened. Giulia felt Rosalina stiffen, her hands clutching painfully at Giulia’s. “Promise me,” she hissed, eyes wide and desperate as she pressed something into Giulia’s hand, closing her fingers tight around it, “promise me! Don’t you ever let them tell you who to love.”

Giulia nodded, frightened, all her questions caught fast in her throat at the stormcloud look on Papa’s face.

And then Papa took Rosalina by the elbow, pulled her away and marched her from the room, leaving Giulia standing in the hall with a scrap of paper in her hand, crying like she was the one who’d been sent away herself.

* * *

Weeks passed without word. When Giulia saw one of Rosalina’s friends in the street, the woman gave her such a poisonous look that she didn’t dare ask if she’d had any news of her cousin.

The next time one of Papa’s business associates asked after his niece, Papa said with bland but distant pride, as if it were something that happened long ago, that dear Rosalina had found a holy calling, far away. 

Rosalina, who used to steal the Communion wine and get drunk in the church garden, a nun! The hot wash of rage that swept over Giulia dizzied her; she thought her face would break with smiling falsely and playing the good daughter while her nails dug furrows into her palms under the table.

Papa retired to the library with his associate after dinner, Mamma to her room to prepare for the night’s party. By ten o’clock, when the jazz really started flowing, she’d already be three sheets to the wind, her hair still coiffed, her smile painted on and her gaiety as sparkling as the champagne.

In her room, Giulia smoothed out the scrap of paper again, read the address on it, thought of fierce, wild Rosalina who was certainly no nun.

The address was in Philadelphia, a city that might be as far away as California or England for all Giulia knew of it. That was all: just an address. Since Rosalina had left—since Papa had made her leave—Giulia had spent hours looking at that scrap of paper, trying to find some secret message in it. She’d even held it to a lightbulb to see if Rosalina had written on it in lemon juice, like when they’d all played at detective games as children. But all there was was that address, hastily scrawled with a dull pencil.

_Don’t you ever let them tell you who to love._

Had Rosalina had a boyfriend? She didn’t remember Rosalina ever talking to men much, except Tebaldo, and he was family. There’d been an Irish boy bothering her for a while, throwing pebbles at her window and sending her terrible poetry, but Rosalina had always spoken of him with an eyeroll and half-amused concern for his health if Tebaldo or one of the other Cappellett boys caught him hanging around the estate.

And anyway, Papa wouldn’t throw Rosalina out over a silly boy, even if he was Irish.

* * *

Giulia turned fifteen at the end of July, without Rosalina to hug her and wish her well. Sitting there in front of her vanity in her dressing gown, she saw a child in the mirror, her eyes too wide and trusting, her mouth too soft. 

No one ever talked about Rosalina.

It wasn’t so difficult to take up her skirts, to shorten a sleeve here and alter a neckline there. A backrub and a few pastries from her favorite bakery persuaded the housekeeper to take her scissors to Giulia’s long brown braids, cropping them into a bob; and if curlers and pins and finger-waves seemed rather a lot of complicated work, it was worth it the first time she looked in the mirror.

There were too many secrets in this house. Even Tebaldo didn’t tell her anything anymore. And if they thought Giulia the child must be protected, sheltered from the truth—well, then the woman would simply have to find those secrets out for herself whether they liked it or not.

The face in the mirror under the new finger-waved bob was still hers, still the same big eyes—now dark with mascara and shadow—still the same level mouth, painted scarlet. Still hers, but as she gave her reflection a tentative smile, she felt a curious stirring of bravery, like she’d borrowed it from the lipstick Rosalina had left behind.

Wherever it came from, they’d have to see soon enough. There was no going back now.

Giulia put her chin up, took a deep breath, and walked down the stairs into the ballroom the way her cousin would have, not giving a toss for what anyone thought of her, even if everyone could see her knees.

“I’d like to be called Julie now,” she told them calmly, ignoring Papa’s frown and Tebaldo’s poleaxed stare. “We’re in America, and I’m not a child anymore.”

* * *

The sun is just peeping over the skyline, the cool blue of dawn giving way to gold when Tebaldo finally awakes from his daze. It’s chilly enough this early that Julie finds herself shivering and wishing she’d taken a warmer coat. The coat Ronan drapes around her shoulders is still warm from his body, but Tebaldo’s stiff hand in hers is ice-cold. Maybe she’s holding onto him too hard, but she’s half afraid he’ll pull away, and this time they won’t be able to get him back, that his honor will take him back into town. And then—well, there aren’t so many ways a boy like him can end up in that kind of life. None of them are good.

“Where are we going?” Tebaldo rasps as they turn the corner and the train station looms in front of them, brick and glass and steel and tracks to nowhere and everywhere. He’s not frowning like she expected, annoyed with the mystery; his eyes are lost, and his fingers grasp hers with unthinking harshness.

Tebaldo’s question brings Ronan up short on her other side, and she runs into Tebaldo, who pulls away with a stammered apology, stopped only by her refusal to let go of his hand. 

“Where _are_ we going, Julie?” Ronan asks, with that teasing laughter around the corners of his mouth that had made her love him that night he climbed up to her balcony. If they were alone, she’d kiss him for it—but not in front of Tebaldo, not yet. She understands things that she hadn’t before. She has an idea now, of why Papa drove Rosalina out, why Rosalina said what she said.

The scrap of paper is still in her pocketbook, carefully folded, edges worn soft by time and paper smudged—but the address is still clear as day, a few words of hope and family and love.

“Philadelphia,” she says, slipping her arm around Ronan’s waist and tugging Tebaldo closer—not as close, but there’s time now. Time, and a future. “Philadelphia, my darling boys.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance."
> 
> All characters based on the Hungarian production unless otherwise noted.
> 
> **Character Key:**
> 
> Giulia "Julie" Cappallett - Julia Capulet  
> Rosalina Cappallett - Rosaline (Shakespeare)  
> Greg Sansone - mashup of Gregory and Sampson (Shakespeare)  
> Tony Cappallett - Lord Capulet (Romeo e Giulietta)  
> Tebaldo Cappallett - Tybalt  
> Ronan Montague - Romeo Montague  
> Police Commissioner Scaliger - Prince Escalcus
> 
> The housekeeper is Nurse. :-)


End file.
